Dual Wield Q&A

[Hymn]

Rotation and Spec Information out of date once 3.1 is released, update planned once things settle.

Decided It'd be a fancy good idear to bring this along for the ride.

Lets begin with some basic knowledge, then go into some spec options, then peruse what will happen in 3.0.8

A bit about hit rating

Strikes are capped at 8% hit
Spells are capped at 17% hit.
Several things increase spell hit chances, including the talent Virulence, and a debuff provided by a few of our caster friends. these stack. So if you have 3/3 virulence (this is probably a good idea) and the debuff, gear for 11% spell hit. its near mandatory for any DW spec based around Howling Blast (which is most of them).
Keep in mind that Spell Hit and Melee Hit scale differently with Hit Rating. You need 26.2 hit rating for 1% chance to hit with spells and 32.7 hit rating for 1% hit to melee attacks.

Some basics on stats and their usefulness

Str, 1 pt in str will give 2 attack power. All DK spells scale with attack power, and thus strength. The death knights ghoul scales with strength, not with attack power. Thus making it the better stat for any perma-ghoul build by far
Crit, this no longer increases killing machine procs, crit still plays a large role as it affects a significant portion of our dps, though not as much as it used to
Haste, increases white damage, BCB (Blood-caked blade) damage, necrosis damage, and killing machine proc chances, by giving you more opportunities to crit.
Expertise, while expertise will only help your strikes land, it's still important to not be constantly wasting gcd using plaguestrike over and over again, so this is not a worthless stat.
Armor Pen, this is low on the list as much of our damage simply wont be affected by this, and the rewards for the armor pen rating are low to begin with, so even pure melee classes arent in love with it.

Some basics on rotations

I think its safe to say that most DWers aren't going to be using glyph of plaguestrike, and most WILL have glacier rot. This means you want to start out with a plague strike, so that there is a disease on the target for your icy touch. From there, lets look down the talent tree to killing machine, which again, most DW builds will pick up. This causes IT and HB to auto-crit. Guess what you don't want to happen? that's right, you don't want to use KM on an IT. So if we place them near each other in the rotation, you can wait a single GCD and use HB instead on the KM proc.

To recap at this point, we're expecting most rotations to look like this right now. PS>IT>HB.
Now even further into the frost tree is yet another talent almost every DW build picks up, rime. If Rime procs, you can easily use the second part of your first rotation to simply PS>IT again. This is going to yield more damage than BS>BS, for the GCDs that you're using. So if rime procs, your rotation would look like this PS>IT>HB>PS>IT>DC/dump. as you notice I simply skipped using any BS in there at all. If you find you have the free GCD, sub in the BS, if not, leave it out. If rime does not proc, your first rotation would look like this PS>IT>HB>BS>BS>DC/dump.

So then comes the second rotation, until the upcoming patch, HB still has a cooldown, so you're going to want to use the same rotation, with a minor adjustment. PS>IT>HB>BS/DC>BS/DC what this means is, deathcoil (or frost strike if you've picked it up) is going to do more than bloodstrike, so use it over it priority wise.

And now, some basics on specs

The trispec 13/32/26. This focuses on taking advantage of bladed armors large AP boost, to turn your gargoyle into a dps machine, while taking the over budget perma ghoul talent, and keeping the standard KM-HB frost talents. This still work well for undergeared individuals who wish to DW Glyphs: IT/Ghoul/plaguestrike/whatever you want

The GoG (Guile of Gorefiend) spec 0/44/27(or 0/45/26) Drops the AP/crit from blood in return for turning HB's crit damage into some pretty frightening numbers. Glyph: IT/Ghoul/Wildcard or FS come 3.0.8

The Crypt fever/Bone shield spec 0/32/39. This chooses to sacrifice the points in blood, in return for extra disease damage, 7% increased dps (form bone shield/desecration) and often a point in Night of the Dead to keep the ghoul popping out on fights that kill him. Glyph: IT/Ghoul/Bone Shield

IT spam 0/20/51 or 10/10/51 or some other odd variation. Most notibly this skips scourgestrike, and uses death runes on additional IT's abusing the new sigil which boosts IT's damage. Rotation is a little more precise on this one so I'll list it here: ps-it-bs-ub-it-ps-bs-dc-it-it-dc-it-it-dc repeat.

[Steve]

With the upcoming change to the Glyph of Icy Touch, is there any point having CotG?
I find I'm having trouble spending all my runic power each rotation anyway.

I would probably take the 2points out and put them into Endless winter for the ability to interupt without needing to hold back a reserve of RP, also Chains causing FF is sexy on any fight that needs something to be slowed. And pvp.

[Sulfa]

Firstly, would like to say teh sight seems great, no BS just solid theory,

quick question, just got full T7, from the builds discussed here the 4&2 peice set bonuses seem utterly pointless with any of these builds? (increased Dmg from Oblit and SS and again inc RP from them)

 still using the Titan TH at the mo, happy to swap to whatever gives the best results, running on the old 15/3/53 spec at the mo, only have the ebon blade and other rep reward one handers

Any ideal craftable one handers ?

Alt details  Sulfa>Dragonblight>eu

[Nev]

Firstly, would like to say teh sight seems great, no BS just solid theory,

quick question, just got full T7, from the builds discussed here the 4&2 peice set bonuses seem utterly pointless with any of these builds? (increased Dmg from Oblit and SS and again inc RP from them)

 still using the Titan TH at the mo, happy to swap to whatever gives the best results, running on the old 15/3/53 spec at the mo, only have the ebon blade and other rep reward one handers

Any ideal craftable one handers ?

Alt details  Sulfa>Dragonblight>eu

there is a slow titansteel bonecrusher main hand you can get crafted.

 For easily obtainable fast weapons there isGrasscutter from badges, and also Fang of Truth From wyrmrest faction.


Yes, you are correct that the 4pc bonus is basically pointless with most DW builds, There is one build I used for a long time that does take advantage of 4piece though. 0/33/38. To make this build work you need to have a slow main hand and 4piece tier7, and to make it really shine you need the Sigil of Awareness.

There's 2 ways you can go, Epidemic and no Epidemic but 3/3 Virulence.

With epidemic your rotation would look something like this:
PS IT HB BS BS DC/Dump
OB HB OB DC/Dump

Obliterating on rime procs, Always HB before IT if KM is up.

Without Epidemic:
PS IT HB BS BS DC/Dump
PS IT HB OB DC/Dump

Same thing: Oblit on rime procs, HB over IT if KM is up.

This build can keep up with most DW builds if you have the gear for it, but the traditional 32/39 tends to pull ahead in the end. Also, this will be completely obsolete when the patch hits, so I'm not even sure why I wrote this up, Oh well.

[Sulfa]

Cheers for that, have the wrym sword  and the ebon 2.6, will pick up grasscutter from dalaran

many thanks

[Nev]

Going ahead and copying this post here, where it belongs.

Not to get off-topic.

I recently moved to 0/32/39 from 17/0/54 because I wasn't seeing the numbers I should in raids or 5-mans.  I have a nice assortment of epics from crafted BS items to Heroic 5-mans and paying 80 emblems of heroism for the chest.  When I dropped the 2H'der in favor of DW'ing,I lost appx. 200 str which dropped the AP naturally. I am using two fast 1H'ders which are the blue rep swords form Wyrmrest.  I have a couple of upgrades in mind. 

Could someone take a peek at my armory?  Erdanair.  There is only one. 

I plan on testing out the 3 spec hybrid and wail on a practic dummy.  I was getting around 1700 dps on the epic and 2000 dps on the standard 80 with the Fr/Uh build.  I use the recommended rotations, but I rarely use the gargoyle.  Usually boneshield is up and my ghoul is out slashing. HoW is activated when I test as well.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.  I enjoy the melee class and just been uninterested in a 2H build.  I enjoy what DW'ing is about want to display what a DW DK can do.  Hunters piss me off in 5-mans and raids! 

Hmm, The first thing I notice is your hit rating, Its through the roof, You can definatly drop any/all hit gems you have in favor of pure STR gems. You should also drop your  Dragons Blood trinket infavor of a passive AP trinket - my suggestion would be the one from heroic Drak'Theron -incisor fragment. Your ap is quite low for a spec that relies to heavily on it, and that trinket swap and gems will probably bring you closer to where you need to be.

Just a quick look and rough math in my head - with those gems and the trinket swap, you should be able to get pretty damned close to 3k, somewhere in the 2.9k range witch would be MUCH better with your spec.

Another small thing - You should enchant Cinderglacier to one of your weapons and RotFC to the other, it should be slightly better then dual crusader.

You say you use the recommended rotations, Well i'm going to go ahead and recommend it again just in case you got misinformed somewhere along the line:

PS IT HB BS BS DC/Dump
HB IT PS IT IT DC/Dump

Depending on if you had to move or any other reason that would allow your runes to cool down before they need to in your rotation, you can usually drop the 2nd PS as its your lowest dps ability, when you get a rime proc, use the extra Fr/Uh runes on one IT, And in most cases your better off skipping that extra UH rune for a higher dps option, or using it to refresh bone armor if you need to.

Make sure your swapping IT and HB around in your roations according to KM and Cinderglacier procs. HB scales better with both of these procs so you want to use them on HB whenever available - that being said: Don't hold more then 1gcd for them, This is why HB and IT are right beside each other in the rotation.

For the 2 IT phase, dont sweat about using KM/CG procs on those, There's no way to get around it.

That's all I can think of at the moment, let us know when you kick some hunter ass~

[Erdanair]

Thank you very much for your input.  I am going to stay put at the Fr/Uh build.  With a few tweaks of gems and one change of the cloak I am at 2800 AP currently.  I will farm for that trinket and that will have me at 2948 AP!  I had a chance to get it once, but missed out on it on a greed roll.  Currently the strength is at 952.  Trying to get those keys to success!  I will see what I can land when I do Naxx this weekend.  Hunters beware!

Tested on the Elite Dummy and I was doing 2200 DPS over a 2m time frame.  I ran Heroic Nexus with 1 2H'der DK, 2 Pallies(Prot, Holy) and a mage.  Myself and the DK finished at 1984 and 1945 respectfully. 

[Warmos]

Ok. gz for your own forum. I was thinking. Ok."fast/fast is better for the trispec and 32/39 atm. and that slow/fast is better for 44/27." that was you from DK.info but how is that 44/27 is better with slow/fast.

This is me:http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Ravenholdt&n=Warmos

noticed there is topic for this.

[Hymn]

With the upcoming change to the Glyph of Icy Touch, is there any point having CotG?
I find I'm having trouble spending all my runic power each rotation anyway.

I would probably take the 2points out and put them into Endless winter for the ability to interupt without needing to hold back a reserve of RP, also Chains causing FF is sexy on any fight that needs something to be slowed. And pvp.

I think there will continue to be a point to having two points in CotG, however I do think you may get away with taking them out for a more personalized build.

[Numnumnumnum]

Hey,

I have been reading your posts over at deathknight.info for a while now and have just never posted.  I am typically a tank one of the Main tanks for my guild but I also go DPS spec on nights when we dont need the tanks and was just looking for some advice.  I just went 32/39 for the first time on Sunday night and did 6k DPS on malygos but that includes Phase 3 which is ridiculous for DPS.  I was wondering what you guys thought the max hit I would need is since i am sitting around 350 Hit rating and didn't know if that was too much and I can swap some hit gems for 16 str gems or if this was about right.  Also im very good with math and in the near future im going to take a look into doing some math on KM uptime with various weapon speeds to get some solid numbers up for the upcoming patch changes.

[Hymn]

you're looking for 17% spell hit. this includes virulence and the s.priest debuff., so most often you only need 11% hit and that means you are probably higher on HR than you need to be.

[Numnumnumnum]

Alright i will drop some hit then I just didn't know if it was worth it for us to focus more on getting as low melee miss as possible or it if was better for us to focus on more str and crit since I am new to working on DPS since I have only tanked up until this week really.

[Nev]

mhm, I've been hovering around 320-350 just from gear latley, gemmed full str, its basically all you need.

[sixpackje]

in how far haste is important for DW?

[Snorks]

Ok. gz for your own forum. I was thinking. Ok."fast/fast is better for the trispec and 32/39 atm. and that slow/fast is better for 44/27." that was you from DK.info but how is that 44/27 is better with slow/fast.

This is me:http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Ravenholdt&n=Warmos

noticed there is topic for this.

44/27 spec includes using FS as a RP dump instead of DC, therefore a slow/fast combo would be better for this spec as FS is based on weapon damage, so therefore a slow mh will give you higher damage on it.

On a side note, Hymn, been following your thread on deathknight.info and loving it, so was glad to hear you started up your own forum, keep up the good work!